The Glass House

By Jody Cooksley

What is a life without Art and Beauty?

Not one that Julia chooses to live. And so she searches the world for both, discovering happiness through the lens of a camera.

A fictional account of pioneer photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, and her extraordinary quest to find her own creative voice, The Glass House brings an exceptional photographer to life. From the depths of despair, with her relationships strained and having been humiliated by the artists she has given a home to, Julia rises to fame, photographing and befriending many of the day's most famous literary, artistic, political and scientific celebrities.

But to succeed as a female photographer, she must take on the Victorian patriarchy, the art world and, ultimately, her own family. And the doubts are not all from others. As Julia's uneasy relationship with fame grows into a fear that the camera has taken part of her soul, her search leads her full circle, back to India, in her lifelong quest for peace and beauty.

A poignant, elegant and richly detailed debut.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cinnamon Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788649209

Jody Cooksley

Jody Cooksley studied literature at Oxford Brookes University and has a Masters in Victorian Poetry. Her debut novel The Glass House is a fictional account of the life of nineteenth-century photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron. The Small Museum, Jody's third novel, won the 2023 Caledonia Novel Award. Jody is originally from Norwich and now lives in Cranleigh.

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The Glass House

Jody Cooksley

Published by Leaf by Leaf

an imprint of Cinnamon Press

Meirion House

Tanygrisiau

Blaenau Ffestiniog

Gwynedd, LL41 3SU

www.cinnamonpress.com

The right of Jody Cooksley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. Copyright © 2020 Jody Cooksley

Print ISBN: 978-1-78864-911-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78864-920-9

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A CIP record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

Designed and typeset by Cinnamon Press. Cover design by Adam Craig © Adam Craig.

Cinnamon Press is represented in the UK by Inpress Ltd and in Wales by the Books Council of Wales.

For my brother, David

Part I

The Artist’s Death

Oh, mystery of Beauty! Who can tell

   Thy mighty influence? Who can best descry

How secret, swift and subtle is the spell

   Wherein the music of thy voice doth lie?

Julia Margaret Cameron, On a Portrait

1861 Freshwater Bay

Their words still rang in Julia’s ears as she ran to the shore. Stumbling on a pile of tide-strewn pebbles, she put out a hand to steady herself against the breakwater and howled at the stars. How could she ever speak to the islanders again? All her plans had dissolved like dreams, leaving her defenceless. A silly, middle-aged woman, filled with the impotent rage of ambition. Only now could she see it clearly.

Moonlight bathed the damp sand along Freshwater Bay: a sweeping horseshoe curve that calmed the waves in the worst weather. A place of peace. The scene of her first encounter with the Society. How could she have trusted them? And the Signor; he had encouraged her all along, knowing she would be exposed. How had she been so foolish? All the visions in her head were nonsense. All her claims to Art, lies.

Placing her boots beside her, Julia sat to rest on the low wall behind the lighthouse and stared at the shimmering river reflecting from shore to horizon. Reckless of her to seek recognition in the first place; hadn’t she always been told it wasn’t natural for women to crave attention? Weary with sadness, she pushed her bare toes into the wet sand and raised them, watching the wells pool with water and merge again with the rest of the beach. Where was the footprint she had promised to leave on the world? She had carried the promise like a sword for most of her life and yet left nothing. No paintings, no words of any use, no brave new Art. Her only footprint would be transient, would fill with water and sand and simply disappear.

The calm sea beckoned her forward and Julia stood, stretched, began to walk towards it. A smooth surface prettily reflected with stars. It was much less cold than she’d expected and lapped gently around her ankles, welcome and comforting. Julia watched as the dark water swallowed her feet, then her calves. Still she walked, vaguely aware of the drag and swell of her skirts. Overhead stretched the low web of stars that wrapped her island, reminding her suddenly of India, the brightness of long hot nights and the yearning to capture the colour of skies. The sense of destiny she felt and the secrets she uncovered. It was a lifetime ago. A lifetime of making wings only to discover that she was never meant to fly.

Something flapped against her neck and she lifted her hand, touched the silk of her bonnet. Why had she felt the need to impress those fools with a ridiculous hat? Fumbling for the ribbons, she shook them free and threw the hateful thing behind her onto the sand. The tumble of her hair, long and loose, made her a child again. Mama’s Indian sunbird, soaring high above the world to see what others could not. A hopeful princess at a vicious party, with a long pink bow at her waist. They had laughed at her then, and laughed at her now. She was tired of trying to please. All she wanted was to sleep, to forget. Scenes from her life flashed past, too fast to catch and hold.

Julia walked as far as she could. When the water reached her waist, she leaned forward and gave herself to the sea, wanting only to be taken, imagining herself floating forever like Ophelia in her bed of reeds.

1822 Calcutta

‘Tell me what it means.’ Julia traced her finger around the outline of a pink circle, studded with dark blue marks.

‘It’s not for children, ma chère. One day you will understand.’

Julia stuck out her lip; Mama was the only grown up who thought she was too small to understand things. Papa answered her questions. He was fun, striding like a king in his crisp military dress and swinging her in the air. She flounced away from the wall and caught the edge of the table, knocking a silver-backed mirror and hairbrush to the ground. Mama flew across the room to scold her.

‘Seven years bad luck!’

‘It isn’t broken.’

‘Lucky for you. Seven years is a long time to be punished for mistakes.’

‘Two years more than Sarah.’

Mama‘s eyebrows closed in the middle when she frowned. Like monkeys before they attacked. ‘Sarah would never be so naughty.’

She was using her distracted voice, starting to move away. It was important to know. Scrolls and parchments covered the walls of their stilted house, as hard to understand as Mama’s mood. Julia tried again, tugging at her bangles. ‘Why are they painted like that?’

Mama stroked the thick paper, her fingers dragging over the curled edge, eyes focussed on something Julia couldn’t see. ‘It’s a science, ma chère. The stars hold your destiny.’

‘When I’m seven, will you tell me what it means?’ When Adeline was seven Papa had given her a pony he’d won in a game of cards. Seven was special, and it was soon. It was too exciting wondering what seven would bring. Mama shook her head slowly. ‘But I want to understand! Papa says I’ll only understand if I ask questions, but what’s the point if no-one will answer them?’ Mama didn’t like the way he always laughed at her charts. Julia gave her a sly look. ‘Shall I ask Papa then? Does he have signs too?’

‘Very well,’ she replied, rolling up the chart with a snap. ‘But you must have your own. I’ll ask the scribe at Pahor.’

The chart was delivered with a flourish by the scribe’s young apprentice, curled in a thick bundle of parchment and tied with grass. If only Mama would look at her so attentively. Whatever it meant it was pretty. Each of the symbols was painted in double colours, surrounded by a pattern of silver stars on a background of swirling lilac and indigo clouds. How wonderful to make such pictures. She would ask for paints for her seven present. Julia turned to the scribe’s boy, waiting patiently, and asked him in Hindustani what it meant.

‘Master says you will live two lives. One will be taken by waves,’ he replied in English, intoning in a flat voice as though reading from a script, his head bowed. ‘One will be broken by mirrors and glass. You must watch for them both.’ The boy raised his head, briefly catching Julia’s puzzled gaze before casting his eyes back to the floor.

With a stony expression, Mama took the chart, gave him a parcel wrapped in cloth and a wad of paper rupiah to deliver to the scribe. Then she ushered him out to the door, before retiring to bed with a headache. Was Mama somehow displeased? Paintings usually made her happy.

Julia searched all over, finally discovering the chart in her mother’s dressing room. It was inside a drawer, lying on top of a frayed yellow envelope containing two small white cotton caps and two dry locks of hair tied at each end with pale green string. Perhaps Mama was planning to make a doll for the special seven present? A doll with old dried hair? A horse would be better. Even one with thundering feet and a head that jerked on its reins like Adeline’s.

She brought her finds down to supper. But, as she held them up for inspection, a swift hand struck everything to the ground. What had she done to make Mama so angry today? Sudden tears blurred everything but the sight of the pear-shaped diamond on her right ring finger as it flew back towards her face. Fine-cut edges left a weal across Julia’s cheek the size and shape of a rosemallow flower. It still smarted the following week, when she and Sarah were taken to be schooled in Paris.

1827 Versailles

Julia’s birthday fell in high summer, when the scent of lavender in Grandmamma’s garden was strong enough to draw tears. A feast was spread on long tables, under the shade of the willow. Girls in muslin brought cards pressed with wild flowers. The number twelve was iced in sugar roses on a tall, white cake. She walked across the lawn to lunch feeling like a princess, hair loose at the back, a secret smile, a wide pink sash around her waist.

Afterwards, she hid in the washroom and wept. To think that she had spoiled such a perfect day by listening to the grown-ups! That coven of old women in jet-black lace and beads, always talking, crouched like spiders over their iced tea and four o’clock gin, crumbling madeleines between their pointing fingers. Yet, crawling along under the table to catch one of the kitchen cat’s new silver-striped kittens, she’d heard her name and stopped to listen.

‘I’m afraid it’s no use pretending we’re waiting to see how she turns out. Julia’s certainly not like her sisters.’

Her ears strained to hear the second, quieter voice.

‘Poor thing. So unlike her own mother too. Sarah’s the very image of her, but Julia…’

She stayed crouched below the table, breathing in tense, shallow gasps with the effort of remaining silent. A light breeze lifted the tablecloth’s edge, briefly exposing her left knee. Don’t let them notice. A sudden vision of Grandmamma’s fierce face brought the acid-sharp taste of tomatoes to her throat. Sarah had warned that too many slices of tart would make her sick.

‘You must admit that, given her heritage, Julia is something of a surprise.’

Another pause. The sound of glasses being filled. Then Grandmamma spoke. ‘She’s young. Young ladies do change. And she’s still quite the garçon manqué.’

‘She’s of age today. There’s nothing about her looks that will improve from here.’

‘And that figure! She’s as dumpy as a sow.’

Hot tears pricked the edges of Julia’s eyes. She would not cry. Not here, where Sarah would demand to know the reason and delight in sharing it among the guests. Grandmamma must surely contradict them? Dry grass prickled unbearably at her ankles.

‘Julia’s bright and intelligent. She will make a good wife,’ the old woman spoke slowly, precisely.

‘She’s unlikely to make a good mistress…’ the voice paused to accommodate a burst of laughter.  ‘But perhaps she doesn’t care.’

Did she care? She didn’t want to. But her eyes were wet, her stomach churning. A scraping of chairs as the old women rose sent Julia scuttling along the grass to the other side of the table, where she stood and brushed the debris from her pinafore, glancing around to see if anyone had spotted her, before running into the house and upstairs.

Music carried from the garden, rising and falling in jarring snatches. It would serve them right if she threw a bucket of water from the window. They weren’t friends anyway, just boring little girls Grandmamma had gathered from neighbouring chateaux to fill out the day, just as she collected adults for her salon. Peering into the worn glass above the washstand, Julia examined her features with interest for the first time in her life. How had she never noticed she looked nothing like Sarah and Adeline, with their rose cheeks and delicate brows? Staring from the murk of the antique mirror was the colourless face of a peasant, with broad, rough features. Only the eyes sparkled, as though refusing to know their place. Slowly she turned her head from left to right, admiring her eyes with their heavy lids and deep amber-brown. From their depths flared tiny orange lights, like flames.

Noises mixed with the music—clattering hooves, the crunch of gravel under carriage wheels—signalling that the guests must be leaving. If they hadn’t missed her before, they would surely be looking now. Grandmamma would never forgive such inhospitable behaviour. Julia, embarrassed and ashamed, jumped up so quickly the wooden stool fell backwards onto the floorboards with a smack that echoed in the bare room. Hiding for so long, she’d missed everything: the dancing, the cutting of that wonderful cake, the girls singing her name as they crowned her with a headdress of gold paper. Such a wasted day. She set the stool straight and peered through the window. At the gates by the front of the house stood perfect Sarah, handing paper twists of sweets to the guests, holding their hands and bobbing down in a theatrical curtsey. Something glinted in the early evening sunlight. A crown: the crown of a birthday girl worn with the confidence of a real princess. For a brief moment she felt nothing but hatred for them all.

Grandmamma put it down to excitement, even after the fight for the crown. Patronising in that special way of elders and betters, no questions asked and the children sent off for an early bedtime. Julia hugged the lumpen body of her doll, Amina, dressed in a thin white handkerchief and sharp-tufted wings made from magpie feathers. Moonlight slanted across her sisters’ faces, lighting the delicate curves of their cheeks. Adeline still looked peaceful and kind, her mouth soft. Sarah’s lips were flatter, giving her smile a sarcastic edge, even in sleep. Her own neat wooden doll lay by her head. Cake crumbs stuck at the corners of her mouth and the sight brought another spike of anger. The birthday girl should know how the cake tasted. She would go down at once to see if any was left. Wrapping herself in Adeline’s silk gown she tiptoed to the door and felt her way along the corridor. No one would follow her even if they woke; Adeline wouldn’t want to be told off and that baby Sarah was still scared of the dark. Who would want to be like them anyway?

She should have confronted them when she had the chance. So what if she looked different to her family? The lights in her eyes were fierce as fire. This was how she should be. Strong. Beautiful as the flames in her eyes. Because beauty could be found everywhere, it could be captured and discovered, she could feel it. She could create it. And it was part of her, whatever those old women might say.

Ideas formed in her mind. Visions of the walls in the Louvre; the frescoes in the church at San Sebastian; the portraits in the Long Hall at school. Pictures of ordinary people, made beautiful with bright colours, threaded with light and tipped with gold. She would learn to paint! Already her head was filled with ideas. No one could prevent her from becoming an Artist. As an Artist she would have more beauty at her fingertips than her sisters could imagine, and such beauty would never grow old and fat like Grandmamma’s.

Forgetting the cake, Julia half-ran to the study and seized her short quill from the pot. Thank-you cards were stacked in the pile she had been made to start. Those that were finished were stamped roughly with the family seal and bright red beads of wax scattered the desk like a blood trail. Drawing the newly sharpened nib across the soft pad of her left hand she scoured a cut and squeezed it quickly onto the pages of her letter book, scratching thin red lines of script.

Until her twelfth birthday she had neither imagined growing up, nor considered what her future life might bring. Now she knew she would be an Artist. When she’d finished writing, she dried the ink, threw the blotting paper onto the embers of the fire and hid the promise in her reticule, drawing the strings up tightly.

Stories from the Glass House:

Henry Taylor

A wholly natural scientist: inquisitive, determined. Always wanted to get to the bottom of things, to understand them properly. Very unlike a woman in that regard. Such a fascination for collecting the natural world, for sorting it into piles and putting it into boxes that she could label. If she’d been in possession of any kind of masculine patience, she may well have discovered something astonishing about the order of things. But she possessed nothing of the sort. She was impetuous, impatient and she only ever wanted to be an artist anyway. Of that she was certain, although one could see how very unhappy it made her.

My wife, Alice, always claimed that the camera was her saviour, and photography really the perfect thing for her. It was creative science and she made sure she understood the chemistry behind it, even if she did break all the rules. Such a feminine approach, quite mad really. But then someone like Julia Margaret could never have done anything ordinary.

We were all in thrall to her once she was on the throne in her Glass House. I’ve no idea how she persuaded me to wear that hat for my portrait. It wasn’t mine, probably belonged to her husband. She dragged the hat, and a cloak too, from her costume box. A dreadful floppy velvet hat, the kind a wandering minstrel might wear. It gave me a soppy look, quite at odds with my work. Alice said it made me look romantic, but I regretted it afterwards. I’d needed a photograph I could use for my playbills and it simply wasn’t serious enough. Though I did refuse to wear the cloak, which she’d covered in stars like the robes of a wizard. So perhaps I got away rather lightly. A great many of her poor subjects were bullied into the wearing of such costumes.

Julia Margaret loved the very idea of magic, and superstition was rife in the whole family. Been in India too long I should say. The mother was half mad with it, even when I was there, and what happened to those poor drowned babies was enough to send anyone screaming. I don’t think Julia Margaret knew. She was so young she would have missed the worst of it. It affected all the sisters though, in their own ways. Adeline was dreadfully melancholy. Virginia was terrified of everything. Sarah was the only one of those Pattle girls with her feet on the ground; she knew what she wanted in life and woe betide anyone if they stood in her way, even her own sister.

Julia Margaret pretended superstition was all nonsense, but for her there was magic everywhere, not just fairies in the trees but a sense of the mystical about everything. She was filled with these romantic notions about the world, always expecting something to happen. In the end I suppose it did, though she waited long enough for it to come.

1832 Paris

‘Don’t make such a cross face Sarah. It’s a wife’s duty to be with her husband.’ Mama looked across to where Julia sat, wearing a riot of colourful silk roughly sewn into a dress. A muddled heap of brushes and a little wooden easel lay at her feet. ‘Julia understands why I must go back, don’t you darling?’

Julia didn’t wish to understand; she would far rather her handsome father was sitting before her, scented with cigar-smoke and whiskey, the promise of parties. Mama was no easier to talk to than Grandmamma, sitting straight-backed in formal lace while her daughters lounged on the grass. A light dusting of chalky powder lit her cheeks. The pear-shaped diamond sparkled on her finger. In the two years since her last visit, Julia had painted tirelessly; Adeline was the only person to have commented on her work. Approval from her elder sister was not worth having, she liked everything. If only Mama would show some sign of pleasure in her efforts.

‘Little Virginia won’t settle until I leave this time. You sisters will need time to get to know each other.’

‘She seems terribly shy.’ Julia tossed her head. That baby had done nothing but cling to Mama’s skirts since she’d arrived. Worse than Sarah for her constant hovering by the looking glass, always swishing her skirts and dressing her hair. As if she wanted people to notice her. As if they wouldn’t anyway. Already it was plain to see that Virginia would be the most beautiful in the family.

‘Do you like my robe? Adeline says it’s enchanting.’ Julia performed a theatrical twirl that flared out her silks in a small coloured dome, like an Indian parasol. She was proud of the clothes she made, never using patterns but forcing the fabric into shape with heavy stitches that Madame sadly remarked could have fixed a fisherman’s net. There were bright silks and satins for warm weather and evenings, velvet for the colder months and everything was liberally trimmed with ribbon and glittering paste jewels.

‘It’s certainly interesting.’ Mama smoothed back her curls and patted a tortoiseshell hair-comb into place. Perhaps I will ask Madame to arrange some dressmaking lessons.’

Sarah scrubbed at the paint smear on the shoulder of her pale blue dress. ‘If these marks don’t come out, I shall need someone to make me a new dress,’ she said, frowning. ‘Don’t you ever clean those filthy brushes of yours?’

‘Delacroix never cleaned his brushes. He said it filled his work with the ghosts of his other paintings. I rather like the idea, as though looking at one painting might mean looking at them all.’ Julia picked up a brush and swept it through the air. She’d been making a special study of paintings in the churches that dominated every street near their school in St Germain. Graphic depictions of martyrdom in bright jewel tones. Such paintings generated questions Madame found it difficult to answer, but Julia kept a list in her notebook, promising herself that, one day, she would be able to order as many books as she wanted, about whichever subjects she chose.

‘You’re not an artist, and I very much doubt you ever will be.’ Sarah aimed her words with a sibling’s affectionate spite. ‘Grandmamma says you are wasting your time.’

It was a secret Julia wished she’d never shared. Sarah had a nasty habit of storing information to use unkindly. And she fawned all over Grandmamma, dutifully rubbing her swollen ankles, brushing her thinning hair. Did they think she didn’t know about the wigs? Soon the old woman would fade away entirely, like her legendary beauty, and she would leave nothing: no legacy of great works, no lasting kindness on another’s life. Such an end was everything Julia dreaded. She held up another brush and made as if to throw it at Sarah, narrowing her eyes.

‘Do stop that Julia, you’re much too old to engage in such silly behaviour. Let me see.’ Mama retrieved the canvas from the grass, holding it in front of her and turning it from side to side to consider the unfinished image. Proportionally the figure was strange, the perspective of the background skewed, the wild brush strokes clearly visible. Julia was pleased to recognise the shock on Mama’s face.

‘It is a likeness. Of a kind,’ she said at last, gingerly replacing it to rest against the legs of the garden seat.

Julia scowled.

Why on earth should a painting need to be a likeness? People should care how it made them feel. ‘It’s an image from my head! How do you know what it is supposed to look like?’ She jumped to her bare feet and Mama gave a tiny cry.

‘Julia! You’re almost a woman, I should not need to remind you that it’s unladylike to go about the place without shoes.’ Mama threw up her hands and Sarah smirked, stretching out her own legs, the ends of which were neatly buttoned in high